Guide de xénoarchéologie
The Xenoarchaeology Station is a complex north of the Mining Outpost. It has many rooms and a lot of equipment, but you don't need most of it to get katanas and guns out of the ground. This will be your home base and features *The Anomaly Lab, where anomalies can be examined using the equipment in this room. Some spectroscopy machines are also located in this room. *The Chemistry Lab, where all chemicals can be produced. This room has both a chemistry dispenser and a Chemmaster for the intricate work of preparing samples and mixing things, for SCIENCE! *The Hydroponics Lab, located behind the chemistry lab, has everything one would need to grow a little food, or whatever alien spores you happen to find. This lab has a supply closet with a hydroponics chest and plant analyzer, so no need to steal anything from the main station. *The Spectrometry Lab, where detailed materials testing is done on samples brought in from the field. What You'll Need *'Excavation suit and oxygen tank': Space proof and ready to begin digging. Don't walk out without your oxygen tank and internals now! Or should I say get sucked out by airflow, knocked over, and pop a lung because you forgot to grab one and turn it on *'Pickaxe': There are a few of these around. You’ll want one. That dig site isn't gonna dig itself out, and though you may not want to be careful using this to avoid destroying the artifacts, you're going to need it to get to the actual artifact bearing tiles. *'Optical Meson Scanner': This is a vital piece of equipment, it will highlight terrain and floor allowing you to see ores and digsites through the walls of the Asteroid. Note this does not show actual objects that are not illuminated, merely parts of the environment. *'Lantern': For light, necessary if you want to see actual objects on the Asteroid and not lose them when you walk a small distance away. The complement to the Optical Meson scanner. *'Depth Analysis Scanner': This device detects digsites and will be one of your most used objects. It gives the necessary information to calibrate your suspension field, calculate the depth you will excavate to and even the GPS coordinates of your digsite. *'Excavation pick set': This contains a set of fractional picks that you will need to carefully carve down walls to get to unusual rocks. Necessary for the precise excavation of materials. However not all of these are necessary to get the job done. *'Hand pickaxe' - Similar to the fractional picks, this hand pickaxe allows you to mine out a large depth at once. *'Wrench': Essential, as you'll need it to secure and un-secure the field generator. Keep it handy and close, like in excavation belt. *'Core Sampler': This is used to take rock samples from strange rocks which will be covered later in the sampling section. To extract your samples, just use the device. You can return your used and empty baggies back into the device. *'Welding Tool': You have this strange rock but what is there to do with it? Weld it of course! Bring this puppy with you to the research outpost because it isn't going to be given to you there. Optional *'Magboots': Airlocks are great at protecting the base from the pressures of space, but protecting you? Not so much. Consider asking the AI to allow you to 'borrow' magboots from EVA, or the space suit in telescience has a pair of magboots already made available to you. *'Hyperzine': Life in an excavation suit is hard, you will go slow. And you will go even slower activating your magboots. Hyperzine on the research outpost is easy to obtain and will increase your productivity several times over. *'Measuring Tape': Important, but unnecessary if you have a good memory or a notepad. Still, this tool may save you from ruining a digsite simply because you lost count of your excavating. *'Global Positioning Device': You can use this to help you find dig sites if you write down your location as the device lists it. Very useful if you have more than one Xenoarcheologist. Marking down the GPS location of the samples you have taken will be useful in locating large artifacts using sample analysis later, note your depth scanner can already give you the GPS coordinates of your digsites, this can be useful in finding specific places later however. *'Tracking Beacon': Sends its location to locator device, allowing you to quickly find the right spot. You can adjust frequency to use multiple beacons with one locator device. You can always use this to make sure you don't lose the field generator, or to find old digsites in areas of the Roid that have been largely mined out. *'Locator Device': Adjust frequency to the frequency of tracking beacon that you want to find and reset the device. After some time it will show an arrow pointing in general direction of the beacon. Unfortunately, it won't reset it by itself, always pointing in the same direction, so you have to do it manually. Where to Dig See those brown rocks with silver lines in them? Those are what you want. If you see a number of these rocks in a cluster, you've found yourself a nice digsite. Also, clusters may have additional digsites in hidden form, with no distinctive lines showing, similar to miners ore sites that drop ores without showing. Scan around to find these spots as well! Found a potential site? Scan it and the surrounding rocks with the depth analysis scanner. If it only hums, go ahead and pick it away. If it pings, leave it alone for now. Back to the Outpost Coming and going to the research outpost can be a daunting task, but there are several ways to make it much faster! The outpost has very useful conveyor belts on the right side of its entrance. One conveyor goes in and the other out, by resting on these conveyor belts one can leave or enter the outpost without need of an airlock to allow them passage. Another feature of the inwards conveyor belt is that it has a delivery chute leading to the sample preparation lab. This allows you to drop off core samples to your Anomalist for analysis without ever needing to enter the outpost! Alternatively if you are doing sample analysis yourself, try using the air tubes! They will take you directly to numerous places on the satellite such as the outpost shuttle bay and the sample analysis lab. Actually Digging You've found an acceptable tile. Time for digging more prep work Setting up the Field Remember that field generator you had to drag around? Push that against the rock you want to start with and wrench it down (ensure it's facing the rock). Make sure you can still reach the rock in question. Swipe your ID through the generator to unlock it. Once you scan it and know what material type it is, you need to plug in the necessary field type. Here is a list of the proper field types - material types: * Carbon - Trace organic cells, typically used for carbon dating of organic remains. * Potassium - Long exposure particles floating in the depths of space, such as meteorites. * Nitrogen - Crystalline structures. * Mercury - Metallic derivatives such as ferritic elements and pure metallic substances. * Iron - Metallic composites such as alloys and atomic structures that are metallic in nature. * Chlorine - Metamorphic/igneous rock composite. * Phosphorus - Metamorphic/sedimentary rock composite. * Plasma - Anomalous materials such as bluespace phased composites that are not fully understood by modern science. Recommended for unknown material types. Also, an important thing to know is how to change the power cell in the field generator, it wont last forever. Screwdriver the generator, then use a crowbar, then with an empty hand, remove the cell. Doing the reverse will make it functional again. You can upgrade the field generators cell, for example adding a hyper cell in there will allow you to dig all the live-long day. Scanning Scan the rock you want to start with and take a look at the results. The first thing you should note is the anomaly material. Set the field to the corresponding material. Next, pay attention to the anomaly depth and clearance. These two numbers determine how far you need to dig. The formula for dig depth is Depth = anomaly depth - clearance + 2 Digging Enable the field of corresponding material from the scan. Using the hand pick and the picks from the set, dig out to the depth attained from the formula above. You can find out the depths your picks dig out by examining them. * The hand pickaxe digs a depth of 30cm * The pick set is based on a 12cm digging depth, and each digs some fraction of that * The brush removes only 1cm of depth, rarely would this ever be necessary for precision digging. Save it for the large artifacts if at all. If you want to save space and be efficient you can get by with just the hand pickaxe (30cm), the 5/6th pick (10cm) and the 1/6th pick (2cm). Getting the Artifacts If you did everything right, a strange rock should appear for a second before being absconded by the field. Disable the field and assuming the tile remains intact scan the digsite again to check for more potential strange rocks. Hit that strange rock with a welder. That's it, really. You might find anything from tools to kitchen knives to guns. Alternatively take a core sample for our sample preparation segment. So you’ve got a core sample! Now you have to do something with it. Take it back with you to the chem lab. You’re going to be in the lab for a while, so go ahead and take off that heavy suit. If you happened to find anything useful while you were out there, feel free to drop it in the anomaly lab on your way to the chem lab. Now, simply click the core sampler to get a baggy with your core in it, and then the bag again to get your sliver of rock out. Rock in hand, pop that baby in the grinder and grind it into a thin pink paste. The next steps are what’s called the DST, but we’ll just call it prepping your sample. THIS IS IMPORTANT. DO NOT FORGET A STEP. Preparing your Sample Analysis So you've went and dug up a digsite to find a strange rock. Well thats great, but you're still thinking small. Let's start our hunt for the mysterious large artifacts by taking a sample and prepping it to scan. # Take the core sample and use it on a strange rock. Make sure you mark down the GPS location you got it from. # Activate your core sampler, and your core sample will be ejected inside of a small plastic bag # Activate the baggy so that the rock sliver is taken out of your baggy, put the baggy back in your core sampler. (It starts with 10 bags) You also need to make the compound known as Lithium Tungstate to prep your sample, which is prepared as follows * 1 Lithium * 1 Tungstate * 2 Sodium * 4 Oxygen Sample Preparation This method will turn those silly core samples into something our machines can analyze! Note: here you will be moving around a beaker several times, do not spill the contents on the ground or you need a new sample! # Grind up the rock sliver using the All-In-One-Grinder. It creates 50 units, if you want to be safe transfer a smaller amount over to another beaker. # Take 10 or 20 units of the Lithium Sodium Tungstate we made earlier, put it in the beaker containing your ground rock. It will bubble signaling its reaction. # You should now have density separated rock, chemical waste, and if you didn't move your ground rock into another beaker you may have extra. # Put the beaker on the bunsen burner (a small 3 line sprite) located on the table. Make sure you get the message informing you it’s on the burner. # Toggle the burner on, it should show flames. Each time it bubbles it will signal having finished another 10 units of density separated sample. # Take the beaker to the ChemMaster. Extract all waste material, and all extra ground rock. All that should remain is analysis fluid. # You should now have 8 units of useable analyzing fluid in your beaker! Sample Analysis If you’ve followed the steps correctly, you should now have some usable fluid. We will now add to our sample fluid another element known as a 'carrier' fluid, this will be the background our measurement is taken against. There are three things that may occur when doing an analysis with different carrier fluids: * The carrier fluid is the same as the material type, causing a "100%" accuracy match or a "0%" accuracy match, this is not taken to be reliable. * The results were inconclusive. This means the carrier fluid you chose did not react properly with the sample, you must try another. * You get some percentage of accuracy between 0 and 100. This means your carrier fluid succeeded. More than one carrier fluid can give a real result and each can have different accuracies. Now you’re ready to start a test battery of your sample. There are numerous boxes of solution trays scattered about, each solution tray holds 2 units of fluid. Using a dropper set to 1u, we will add 1 unit sample fluid and 1 unit carrier fluid to the tray (this part can be done using the chem dispenser). Each carrier fluid will give a somewhat different result based on its compatibility, try experimenting if you don't like your original result. These are the common carrier fluids, note that are the same as the field type. You should always try the field type you used while digging as your carrier type as well, as it is very likely to give you good results. Though it is not necessarily the only one to give you results. Note this is the same list we showed you earlier while digging, so be sure to use your depth scanner again to check the material type again or remember the field type used while digging. * Carbon - Trace organic cells, typically used for carbon dating of organic remains. * Potassium - Long exposure particles floating in the depths of space, such as meteorites. * Nitrogen - Crystalline structures. * Mercury - Metallic derivatives such as ferritic elements and pure metallic substances. * Iron - Metallic composites such as alloys and atomic structures that are metallic in nature. * Chlorine - Metamorphic/igneous rock composite. * Phosphorus - Metamorphic/sedimentary rock composite. Analyzing Samples Here you will see the true power of a fully fitted research outpost. Not all of these machines are fully necessary, and some at this point will just give what is essentially flavor text. But some will allow you to find large artifacts more easily. It is recommended you activate the freezers and set them to about 273K or 0C, as they will be cooled by by both the freezer and the nearby air alarm in the room. Setting them colder may be necessary if you intend to run them constantly. Basic Machines * Gas Chromatography - This machine is a great baseline when you want to use all the anomalist machines. It allows one to test the compatibility of carrier fluids against the sample fluid. It also identifies types of tests that are applicable when using that carrier fluid. Try using the common carrier fluids such as the one applicable to the material type (field type), carbon, or iron. * Ion Mobility- This machine is used to identify what quantity of the carrier fluid is present. Basically, the higher the number, the more likely that’s the material your anomaly is made out of, but this device can only test one carrier fluid and will give no results if there is none of that reactive agent present. * Accelerator - Used to examine the age of the material, only works on the billions of years scale. * Isotope Ratio - Used to examine the age of the material, only accurate up to a billion years. Large Artifact Hunting So you want to hunt the great white whale. Hopefully she will not swallow ye. These machines are capable of giving you data that can be directly used to find large artifacts by giving you an approximate circular radius that the artifact will be in. * Fourier Transform spectroscope - This machine allows you to examine which large artifact is closest to the digsite in which you obtained your sample. It will give you a value based on the distance to the artifact. For the most part this value will be relatively accurate, and doesn't depend on carrier fluid accuracy. Use the carrier fluid that you dug the sample out with to quickly get a reading. ** This reading will be off by between +/- 1 distance away for close artifacts, and between +/- 5% for longer range artifacts. ** Note that this machine gives its readings in meters, one tile = 2 meters. ** Also just like real scientists, if you repeat the readings repeatedly and average the estimate, your average will be of far greater accuracy. * Hyperspectral Imager - This machine allows you to find the 'specificity' of the artifact. But its primary purpose is to reveal which artifact was pinged by the sample you took, this information will not always appear so you may need to test the same sample tray more than once until it does. Without this crucial device it is very likely you would run yourself in circles by pinging numerous artifacts, throwing off your estimations of its location. Digging up the Large Artifact So you've triangulated the artifact and now you hope to find it. What you should do is beginning carefully checking ALL rocks to see if they ping, and begin excavating them, eventually you will stumble upon a mysterious depth scan analysis: A depth of 0, clearance of 0, and unknown material type. Now is the time to apply your plasma containment field and slowly dig your way to the very end until the rock disintegrates and only the rocky debris is left. Rocky debris start out partially excavated by RNG amount so use your tape measure to know where you are starting from then beginning excavating with the 2cm tool. After around 170cm depth has been excavated, we recommend using the brush until the artifact is revealed or is destroyed. If it is destroyed then it just wasn't meant to be, begin moving on. Large artifacts are exceedingly dangerous and can kill you very quickly without proper anomalist gear, which itself is not spaceproof. Be extremely careful while excavating. (Supposedly you can move rocky debris, if anyone manages this add this factoid). Make sure you are checked on by the science department occasionally. Even when taking the artifact back to base pulling on it can cause it to activate if it is activated by touch, applying latex gloves from the anomalist gear before attempting to move a large artifact his highly recommended. ME! As of 4-17-2014 Xenoarch has been mostly demolished by some merged code resulting in more or less in single tile dig sites, monster filled cavities in the roid, and random empty debris getting in your way. Just rush a DDrill, scan every tile before you drill it to find the rare lone large artifacts,and zoom around finding artifact tiles to dig. It'll be fixed in time. Mine_turfs.dm randomly gens the roids contents every round but here's more or less your battleplan. On roundstart decide if you're going to shoot for a complete animal skeleton, houses for sleepypens, target war/temple for swords and reloadable guns, if you're going to try and rush large artifacts at the cost of everything else, or some horrible abortion of the last two. Skip this step if you don't mind going slow: If you can't easily and quickly get mining access get a ore satchel anyway. You know how and if you don't, don't ask and Git Gud Faggot. Rush the Ass Field and get at least 5 diamond, rush over to the main mining station, drop your diamonds on the conveyor and turn it on. Walk in the eastern external airlocks, head to the rwindow+grill between the main smelting/loading area and the mining eva and shift the grille+rwindows, head in and smelt and head back up to r&d and make yourself a DDrill. Cruise around the main road and check the tile type with your scanner while digging out the non-artifact tiles rimming the edge of the digsite --------- *If it's carbon and you aren't going for a skelly ignore it. It shouldn't have large artifacts and badmins probably wont be impressed by your 3 bone PENIS GOBBLER enough to give you a cham proj or something. *If it's nitrogen it's probably a house/tech or rarely a temple. Dig just enough to find a unique drop to determine digsite. If you just want guns fuckoff *If it's potassium it's probably a tech but maybe temple. If god hates you it's a war digsite. Dig just enough to find a unique drop to determine digsite. *If you haven't seen carbon/nitrogen/potassium It's probably another fukken house digsite being a cunt. If it is a house site and you want a sleepypen dig the fuck out of it and put all the pens in the DA. I think you can ID them from the regular pens that way but houses are huuuuge fucking cunts to me. Dig just enough to find a unique drop to determine digsite. If you find a temple digsite they're alright but whatever. Otherwise fuckoff and keep chasing the War. ----------- Eventually you're going to find the war digsite. Probably what you came for. Once you do, if you haven't already, grab a xenoarch/scientist locker from the research station/mainstation, dose yourself on kelotane/derma and hack the autolathe for two boxes of .357 shells and make sure your stungloves and cablecuffs are handy. Doesn't hurt to have a 10 chloral/5stox syringe and at least two 50u of stox pills either. If you aren't a faggot you'll get that 27 metal either from mining and smelting it yourself or wrenching the shit out of everything on the researchstation. Head back and carefully dig out all dose strange rocks. Stuff all the katana/claymores/beartraps in the locker. When you get a gun examine it to check for any remaining bullets. NO, you cannot unload them from one and reload another. It's wasted. Once you confirmed if it has boolets pick up your boxes of .357 and try to load them. Alien guns have a 33% of being reloadable and they have a random magazine size. And don't forget, anyone on the roid is probably a ling or has you as an assasinate obj. Terminate with extreme prejudice. If all you care about are large artifacts and you're not a faggot then drill/ddrill around dragging the field generator. When you find a digsite that isn't carbon dig out the non-artifact edges to define the digsite size then carefully extract strange rocks until you identify the digsite. If it's war carefully extract all the strange ruks so you have guns to kill murderboners. If it isn't war or animal/garden - carbon then scan, set field type, handpick until the strange rock probably breaks, rescan, set field type repeat until the tile is gone and repeat for the whole digsite. You'll get a few rocky debris periodically. Scan. If it humms take a Shot of a beverage of your choice IRL. If it pings use your tape measure on it and remember that number. Drag the debris to Isolation room 1/2 on the research station and put it on the anomaly scanner pad. Reuse your tape measure on it then dig to 170CM. After that use the brush until the artifact is revealed or is destroyed. If it is kill then it just wasn't meant to be, chug whole fifth of beverage without stopping. If you're the massivest of Faggots then get yourself Diamond, make a DDrill and Drill around to find a digsite. Scan to see if carbon. If not Handpick the whole fukken thing. This gets you the most empty debris the quickest and the highest likelyhood of finding an artifact_find tile, large artifact, due to the larger amount of tiles you're going through. On the otherhand you're a massive asshole who's just declared themselves validius saladus to any other xenoarch as you are annihilating the digsites. Probably more than a few were war digsites too. ---------------------------- But lets say that after 12 empty debris you finally find one with a large artifact. And you even get it out successfully!? Scan it, translate the report, identify, and despair at the secondary effect not wanting to trigger. anomaly_analyzer.dm if(A.secondary_effect && A.secondary_effect.activated) artifact_unknown.dm //75% chance to have a secondary stealthy (and mostly bad) effect if(prob(75)) effecttype = pick(typesof(/datum/artifact_effect) - /datum/artifact_effect) secondary_effect = new effecttype(src) if(prob(75)) secondary_effect.ToggleActivate(0) And according to this it probably has a secondary effect and it maaay not show up on the report so if there isn't a secondary effect on the report get rollin through the triggers. In general as Xenoarch is updated and affected by updates just go dig through the code and test shit. It's the only way to be remotely sure. For The Admins A guide to Viewing Artifacts with VV Activated: 0,1 Charge level = X Chargelevelmax = X Effect = X effect_type = X Trigger = X Type = /datum/artifact_effect/X If someone asks you to check things out remember to open up the variable set for the 1-2 artifact effects to get all the details ---------------------